Heirs to lost Balkan thrones revive a royal row (Feature)

By Boris Babic Jul 14, 2010, 16:00 GMT

Belgrade/Podgorica - Royal dynasties were dismantled by Communists in former Yugoslavia after 1945, but descendants of Balkan kings, boasting impressive titles, are keeping alive a row rooted in the aftermath of the First World War.

The latest installment in the dispute is between Montenegrin Prince Nikola Petrovic and Serbian Crown Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjevic.

Petrovic wants an apology from Karadjordjevic because the Karadjordjevic dynasty banished the Petrovic family from their country in the wake of the World War I.

The Montengrin prince's great-grandfather, also named Nikola Petrovic, refused to bow to the Serbian Crown Prince Aleksandar's great-grandfather, Petar, when the former was crowned king of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians - what later became Yugoslavia.

Petar Karadjordjevic expelled the defiant Nikola, who was a distant relative, and never allowed him back. The ousted king died in France in 1921 and was finally reburied in Cetinje, the old Montenegrin capital, in 1989.

'I always thought a public apology by the Karadjordjevic family to the Petrovic dynasty ... would be an honourable act,' Prince Nikola Petrovic told the Podgorica daily Vijesti on Tuesday. 'It would open doors to an historic reconciliation.'

But Serbia's Crown Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjevic said through a spokesman that has no intention of apologizing for anything.

'It is not the Karadjordjevic family who banished the Petrovics,' Aleksandar Karadjordjevic's spokesman, Dragomir Acovic, told the Belgrade daily Blic.

He pointed out that the Montenegrin monarch was ousted when he refused to acknowledge the result of a 1918 referendum, in which his compatriots voted for unification with Serbia under the crown then worn by Petar Karadjordjevic.

'I think Prince Nikola would do his ancestors, successors and contemporaries a great favour if he spared a thought before he opened his mouth,' Acovic said, adding that the Serbian 'heir Aleksandar has no intention of bickering with relatives through the media.'

The Petrovic dynasty can at least take solace in the fact that the Karadjordjevices had very little luck during their reign.

King Petar died in the same year, 1921, as his Montenegrin relative and foe, Nikola. His son, King Aleksandar, was assassinated by a Croat nationalist in Marseilles in 1934 at the age of 45.

Aleksandar's son Petar II - Crown Prince Aleksandar's father - fled to London as a teenager when Yugoslavia was drawn into the World War II in 1941.

He was branded a traitor and banned from returning by President Josip Tito's Communists, who emerged as victors and ruled the country until 1990. He died in the United States in 1970.

The row amongst the far-flung royals has caught the public eye, but no few are taking it very seriously, especially considering much more difficult issues stemming from the violent disintegration of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Aleksandar the prince was allowed to return from exile in the 1990s, and a part of the royal estate, including the mansion in the elite quarter of Belgrade, was returned to the Karadjordjevic family.

There was a weak royalist movement in Serbia during the early 1990s, but there was never any serious debate about a possible return of the monarchy.

Alhough his country, as all other former Yugoslav republics, is a republic, Aleksandar continues to use the title crown prince, heads the Crown Council and is active not only in charities, but also political issues.